The state earned 53.1 points out of 100 possible points in the League’s point system, which is actually a bit less than what we earned last year (53.7). Still, that’s barely over half of the possible number of points, which offers a clue about how much work remains. Washington, the top-ranked state, earned only 66.2 points—so clearly there’s plenty of room for improvement throughout the country.

The scores among the top ten or so states are pretty close. States are awarded points in five areas:

Legislation & Enforcement

Policies & Programs

Infrastructure & Funding

Education & Encouragement

Evaluation & Planning

California’s weakest areas, unsurprisingly, are infrastructure & funding and evaluation & planning. For example, we got dinged for not having a statewide bicycle plan. However, according to information hidden deep in the Caltrans website [PDF], the department anticipates beginning work on such a plan in June.

We’re still digesting all the reports and conversations that occurred at the California Bicycle Coalition’s biannual bike summit in San Diego this week. In addition to some very hard conversations about equity and diversity in bike advocacy—a subject that needs its own report—there were more planner-y presentations about on-the-ground bike issues. Caltrans was very active […]

Malcolm Dougherty took on the job of Director of Caltrans at a pivotal moment for the department. Long an independent department, Caltrans had just been put under the control of the new California State Transportation Agency, CalSTA, which had promptly commissioned an outside report on its strengths and weaknesses. That report pulled no punches—it called […]

Two California cities—Santa Cruz and San Luis Obispo—have been newly designated as “gold-level” bicycle-friendly communities by the League of American Bicyclists. Two other California cities were added to the list as well, both earning a “bronze” level designation: Santa Rosa and Woodland. California now has 56 bicycle-friendly communities, the most of any state in the […]

The California central valley town of Modesto is not usually high on anyone’s list of cities embracing cutting-edge pedestrian and bicycle infrastructure. But that may change soon. Modesto is one of the oldest cities in California, but like other central valley towns, it grew to accommodate car travel, with wide, fast streets, plenty of parking, […]

SF State earned Bronze Level Bicycle Friendly University status with the work of one hard-working, enthusiastic, part-time student employee. How much better could it be with full-time staff and real attention to campus bikeability?